Unemployment in October 2008

November 10, 2008

The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 6.5 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons increased by 603,000 to 10.1 million. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 2.8 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.7 percentage points.

The unemployment rates for adult men, adult women, whites, and Hispanics rose in October. The jobless rates for teenagers and blacks were little changed.

In October, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 249,000 to 2.3 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 22.3 percent of total unemployment. The newly unemployed—those who were jobless fewer than 5 weeks—increased by 212,000 to 3.1 million in October.

These data are from the Current Population Survey program and are seasonally adjusted. More information can be found in "The Employment Situation: October 2008," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL 08-1617.

Self-employment in the United States
Trends in self-employment by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including both the unincorporated and the incorporated self-employed, as well as data on paid employees who work for the self-employed.